Website Review

[clunsford]

Don't be nice...be honest

[bathheaven]

As a consumer, I would not use your site. It appears to just be a portal to other established travel sites. I could not find any original content.

[clunsford]

What parts of the site did you visit? I spent many hours coming up with the list of attractions, restaurants, and the rest.

I am not refuting your claim, just very interested in learning how you came to that conclusion.

This is my first site, and before I spend a lot of time and money promoting I want it to be both visitor and search engine friendly.

[bathheaven]

When you click on the orlando hotel link it brings up a page asking for the city. I thought I was looking for orlando hotels. Even if you want to make it multi city searchable it should automatically populate orlando into the field. It looks like you are using travelnow to do your searching. Why should I use your site and not theirs? I could not find any reviews or information on Orlando hotels, motels just the ability to reserve. I didn't find any thing on the site that I couldn't find on travelocity or expedia.

I was reviewing another travel site http://www.virtourist.com/ . They had a large amount of information on destinations. If there was a feature like that I might use your sight.

[clunsford]

Bathheaven,

Thanks for the input. This is my first site. I have worked in the travel industry for the last 5 years. I am putting my experiences to work as much as possible.

I am trying to avoid becoming a travel agent. There are many room resellers, I just happened to choose TravelNow.com. I have contacted them to see if they can tighten up the code on the search function whereas the Orlando info is automatically filled in, and if a visitor wishes to locate other cities they can do so after searching Orlando.

If there is a 3rd party software or room reseller that will allow me to streamline this function I am all ears. I only wish to provide the best service I can.

I am also going to add more content to the site. I am open to suggestions here folks.

I populated this website with information from feedback I have received over the last 5 years. The #1 thing people said thay wanted was to find the hotel first, then they could find out the rest when they arrived at their destination. Most destinations have attraction, restaurant and other type of guides in print available in the rooms. As one person satted in his email "I can't go the bathroom with my computer to read it".

Bathheaven, I really appreciate your frankness and will make the adjustments and additions to the site.

[zeroseven]

Good for a first website...


You could probably start off by making your navigation stand out a little more, rather than blending in like it does not.

Front pages usually don't need, and shouldn't have a whole lot of content on it. You should sum up your website as a description on the front, from there, maybe a bit content of a sneak peak for each page, with the actual page name above it. Sorry if that's confusing.

For example, look at the side navigation on this site:
http://www.answershopping.com.mk
NOTE TO THE WEBMASTER OF THAT SITE: haha, yes, it's *me* Alexbet :p
(Sorry, I know the guy there, and he's gonna find this as a referal.) :D

Anyways, you'll notice the small description. Just organize some of the content inthe middle of your page, like that.

To make your site successful, rather than just another useless site we don't need on the net, you need to put serious thought into your site. You need to create a reason for someone to go there, stay there, and come back.

Sort through your content, take out what yah don't need, or at least organize it in a way where the focus is on the important, valuable content. Offer lots of content, lots, but don't clutter it!.
Information organization is THE most important thing. The visitors shouldn't be forced to read through stuff they don't want to, and at the same time EXTRA content should be available to those who DO want to soak up every detail. An easy solution is a "more Info" button that links to a page with All the info, ect.

Hmmm... what else...
I think that usually professionalism gives your site more trust and credit. Having all those links at the bottom of the site to search engines take away from that. For some of these things, check out other successful sites and see how they do it, and what they do and don't do. You'll find most sections of the net as far as "categories" go, have there own set of guidelines, etc.

I also noticed some of your links on the nav link to other websites for the info. You should try to avoid this as much as possible. I thinks there's nothing I hate more than clicking a page link thinking automatically that I'd stay in the site, just to find that I've ended up somewhere else.
Sure, to us *smart* ones, WE ACTUALLY DO HAVE an idea of what the heck is going on. But take a moment to think about computer illiterate ones... I think we all know someone.. actually a lot of people like that. Something as little as getting sent out of your website can get them lost and confused... hell, some don't know what to do with a popup! :D Although I do realize that most webmasters can't be expected to have some kind of Mega-script to do some of the things that these big corporate sites do, lol.

Anyways, especially with a website like this, try to keep things as organised and as simple as possible. Easy navigation, organised content, clean design/layout.



Wow, my fingers are soar.

[clunsford]

Taking the excellent comments into account I have done a makeover on my site. Take a look at:
http://www.orlando-hotels-motels-an...indexsample.htm

I have been in contact with the third party room reseller and found out I can list every Orlando property individually which should eliminate any confusion and do away with the search form.

Your comments are wanted and appreciated!

[zeroseven]

Hehe, your link is messed.... I'll just provide a working one:
http://www.orlando-hotels-motels-and-resorts.com/indexsample.htm

Hmmm, it is much better already, with that navigation. I think it could use a bit of work still. Lol, I'm not sure if I can type anymore :p
Just look my other post over again :D

[clunsford]

OK, check this out:
http://www.orlando-hotels-motels-and-resorts.com/indexsample.htm

I did a major overhaul. I think I am getting close!

[zeroseven]

Wow! lol, yah! Much better ;)
You're getting there :)

You could maybe try different colors... at least the blue on the beige... it's a little difficult to read.

But yah, as for the site design, just keep pushing it... you'll find that over time you'll get better and better... haha, I still laugh at my very first sites... absolutely horrible... like HORRIBLE :p

[bathheaven]

It looks a lot better. There is some useful information to set you apart from the generic travel stores now.

there are a few problems from the code.
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There is one section that even looks worse.

I have the same problem on mine from using frontpage.

[antizero]

It's definitely looking pretty good! Some constructive suggestions though...

If you can, have the navigation on all the pages. Maybe you could use frames for the off-site pages (like the travelnow.com sections). Then you could keep that nice navigation bar at the top for all the pages, to keep everything uniform and keep your visitors from wandering off because they forgot what site they were on (and so they don't have to use their back buttons to keep browsing your site).

I'd also suggest darkening up the links a bit. They're not an eyesore or anything, but they could probably stand to be a little more visible against the peach-colored navigation bar. Same goes for the header/title...I'd make it a little darker so it stands out more from the white background.

And a minor design detail...the lines above and below the navigation bar are off. On my screen, they protrude past the peach color on the left, and end much sooner than the peach area on the right.

I might also throw some more small images here and there (especially in the attractions section). It's a very content-rich site, so it might be nice to break up the text with some eye candy. You could probably find nice pics of all your attractions...that way people would have an image to associate with the name. I like the little family pics on the front page...very fitting.

Overall, I like where it's going! Keep up the good work. :)

[clunsford]

I am having fits here. I am trying to use the "open in another window" feature. That would solve the visitors getting lost. However, I cannot for the life of me remember how to do it in DreamWeaver. Any of you kind folks want to help me out?

Also, I have played with those damn lines until I am blue in the face. They just seem to have a mind of ther own.

I am putting the same nav bar on each page, and changing the color of the links. Other than that I think it is looking pretty good for a intermediate web designer.

[antizero]

I've never used Dreamweaver, but if it has a way of defining the 'target' for the links, use this: _blank

Or you can manually enter it into the pages. In the <href> tag just change the target from "_top" to "_blank".

So your "Airlines" link would look like this:

<a href="http://www.travelnow.com/airlines/search.jsp?cid=56448" target="_blank">Airlines</a>